The October List (16 page)

She fished in her purse and handed him four twenties.

‘Oh, you don’t have to do that.’ He shook his head.

‘No, no, I’m insisting.’

‘Well,
gracias
.’ He reluctantly pocketed the cash.

‘
Nada
. If he’s not there just leave the package with the doorman.’

Gabriela and Daniel headed to the stairwell again. She caught his eye, in which she detected a gaze of wry humor. ‘Frank’s only
sort of
a boyfriend. Really.’

‘Hey,’ he offered, ‘how can I be jealous of somebody you’re calling “the complication”? If you’d said “stud” or “lover boy,” well, that’d be a different story.’

She flung her arms around him and kissed his neck. They fled down the stairs, exiting into the alley behind the building.

CHAPTER
14

2:50 p.m., Saturday
25 minutes earlier

Turtle Bay, that portion of east Manhattan near the United Nations, was once one of the worst neighborhoods in the city. In the late 1800s the area was littered with unregulated businesses – tanneries, slaughterhouses, breweries, power plants and coal yards – where the rate of injuries and death among workers was horrific. Dark, overcrowded tenements were squalid and stank and were nearly as disease-ridden and dangerous as the blue-ribbon winner of depraved decay in the New York City of that era: Five Points, near where City Hall is now.

Gabriela knew this because the Professor’s favorite topic was New York history. He knew the city the way some men know their favorite baseball team’s stats.

The name, ‘Turtle Bay,’ he had told Gabriela years ago, as they sat in his cozy den one night, derived from the fact that the East River shoreline nearby was a small harbor, protecting cargo and passenger ships from the whims of the waterway, which was treacherous even on calm days and deadly in storms. Turtles would bask on the mud banks, in the reeds and on rocks, while herons and gulls dined on fish and fish remains in the narrow ledge of shallows before the river dropped steeply to its grim bottom.

He’d told her, ‘The place was a dumping ground for bodies back then, the river was – true now but less so. After a bad rain, skulls and bones’d be uncovered. Kids’d play with the remains.’

The river may still have been a watery grave for the occasional Mafia hit victims but, my, how 125 years changed things. The area was now elegant and subdued, and the harbor gone completely – straightened by the FDR Expressway.

Gabriela was standing next to Daniel Reardon now in the residential heart of the Turtle Bay neighborhood, having snuck away from the shadows – in all senses of the word – of the Upper West Side, where they’d been the recipients of such bad news.

They peered down the quiet side street – and easily spotted an unmarked police car parked in front of a small office building that Gabriela pointed out as the home of Prescott Investments.

‘You were right,’ she whispered. ‘They’re watching the place. Looking for Charles. For me.’

The car with the cop inside was facing away from them but still they stepped back around the corner, onto Second Avenue, where they couldn’t be seen. They were blinded by the deceptive sunlight; brilliant but useless against the chill.

‘How many companies in your building?’ Daniel asked.

‘A dozen or so. Small ones generally. We’re small too.’ Just then Gabriela stiffened, looking up the street. Her eyes grew bright. ‘Elena.’

Daniel followed her gaze.

The slim Latina, about thirty years of age, in jeans and a Fordham University windbreaker, strode toward them. Her hair was pulled back and it seemed damp, perhaps from a shower interrupted by Gabriela’s call.

‘Oh, Elena!’ Gabriela hugged her.

‘Isn’t this awful? I’m sick. I’m just sick!’ Her eyes were red, as if she’d only recently stopped crying.

Gabriela introduced Daniel as a ‘friend.’

Looking the handsome man up and down, Elena Rodriguez shook his hand and winked to Gabriela, woman-to-woman, meaning, Well,
he’s
a keeper. ‘We work together, Gabriela and me.’

‘I know. I heard.’

She puffed air from her cheeks. ‘I guess I mean
worked
together. Not anymore.’ To Gabriela, ‘Have you heard anything else?’

‘No, just what the police told me this morning.’

Elena’s pretty face darkened. ‘Did you talk to the same ones? Kepler and some Indian man. I didn’t like them at all. Kepler, especially.’

‘Yep.’

Elena looked wistful and nodded in the direction of the office building. In a soft voice: ‘I walked this way to work hundreds of times and I’ve always been so happy. Now …’ She shrugged. Then the woman sighed and asked, ‘So what can I do? I’ll do anything to help.’

‘Daniel and I are going to try to find something in the office that’ll prove Charles’s innocent.’

‘Find the asshole who’s setting him up.’

Gabriela hesitated and then said, ‘Exactly.’

Daniel glanced her way, undoubtedly thinking how guilty she felt for lying to her co-worker and friend.

‘And we need your help.’

‘Sure.’

‘I have to tell you, Elena, it’s kind of … extreme.’

‘Hey, girl, did I say “anything”?’

‘All right. I need you to get hit by a car.’

‘
What?
’

‘I don’t really mean get hit. Just start to cross the street and
pretend
to get hit. When a cab or car goes by, slap it on the door or the side and fall down on the sidewalk. The cop guarding the building’ll come to help you. When he does, Daniel and I’ll slip inside and search the office. Just don’t give him your real ID. Make something up – you left your purse at home. So you don’t get in trouble after they find out the office got broken into.’

Daniel Reardon stared at Gabriela for a moment then gave a shallow laugh. ‘You come up with pretty good plans,’ he said.

‘I was one hell of an office manager,’ Gabriela replied.

‘When I said “anything,”’ the pretty woman muttered, ‘I kind of meant stay up all night reading through files. But if you want me knocked on my ass, girl, you got yourself an accident. Hey, I get to scream?’

‘As loud as you want.’

CHAPTER
13

12:30 p.m., Saturday
2 hours, 20 minutes earlier

‘Uhn, uhn, uhn …’

‘Jesus,’ Detective Brad Kepler muttered. ‘That’s awful.’ He was angry. And cold too, stiff, sore. They were on the roof of the building across from Gabriela’s co-op apartment on the Upper West Side. Both men had earbuds in, one each. They were sharing.

‘Uhn,’ Surani said.

Kepler gave a harsh laugh. ‘That supposed to be funny?’

Surani didn’t get it.

‘The noise you just made.’

‘The … what noise?’

‘The “uhn.” You grunted. It’s the same as
that
.’ Grimacing, Kepler tapped his earbud. Then he stared back at the open but curtained window of Gabriela’s living room.

‘What noise?’ Surani repeated. ‘I grunted?’

‘You grunted. You said, “uhn.”’

‘Oh. And? What’re you upset about?’ Surani asked, sounding pissed off that he’d been accused of something. Kepler didn’t care; in this Saturday’s pissed-off World Series, he was winning.

‘So we just told her that her boss’s booked on out of town, she’s lost all her savings, she’s outta work and what’s she doing?’

Uhn, uhn, uhn …

‘Fucking him. It’s wrong. Just plain wrong.’

‘He’s pretty handsome. Give him that. Looks just like that actor.’

‘No, he fucking doesn’t.’

‘But you know exactly the actor I mean, right? So therefore he does. And
I
think he’s good looking.’

Kepler believed his partner said this to torture him a bit more.

Surani shrugged. ‘It’s not my business what she does in there. Yours either. It’s our business to watch her. That’s it. Nothing more than that.’

Gabriela and her boyfriend had surprised them by not remaining on the streets, but heading to her apartment. The detectives – prepared to follow her – had scrambled to set up the surveillance on a nearby building, sitting or kneeling on the cold, pebble-covered roof. Kepler and Surani started the recorder and trained the microphone at its target and waited.

Soon they’d heard voices. This was hot-shit electronics and they could make out a fair amount of conversation.

The discussion inside had initially been mostly about Prescott and the company and how Gabriela still had trouble believing the terrible things those ‘assholes’ had said, meaning of course Kepler and Surani. They had also caught a comment that she was shocked and angry about ‘what had happened.’

All the dialogue got recorded. Nothing was helpful.

As for visuals, there hadn’t been much to see at first – shadows, wafting curtains, reflections off shiny surfaces. Then, about twenty minutes ago, the cops had registered some soft whispers and Kepler blinked as he gazed through the window with the binoculars. He gripped Surani’s shoulder, whispering, ‘Jesus Christ.’

They both gaped at the sight of Gabriela taking off her sweater. In her bra and tight stretch pants, she walked to the window and pulled the curtain shut.

Je-sus …

Silence for a time, then the sounds of lust had floated through the airwaves.

And it was still going strong.

‘Uhn, uhn, uhn,’ punctuated by an occasional, ‘Yeah, there. Don’t stop!’

And the ever popular: ‘Fuck me!’

‘My knees hurt. Why do they have stones on the roof?’

‘Drainage maybe.’

‘Oh, the rain doesn’t go through the pebbles?’

Surani said, ‘You are in way too much of a bad mood. Oh, look at your pants.’

‘What? Oh, Christ.’ What seemed to be tar stains speckled his knees.

Kepler heard Gabriela being ordered to ‘Get up on all fours. That’s how you want it, right?’

She replied breathlessly that, yes, that was exactly how she wanted it.

And the
Uhn, uhn, uhn
started up again.

Surani laughed, which made Kepler all the angrier.

Then there came an extended
uhn
. Which meant, Kepler guessed, that the party was over with.

‘Post-coital bliss,’ whispered Surani. ‘About time. I’m ready to get the hell off the roof. It’s freezing up here.’ He rose from his squat.

Kepler said, ‘When she leaves, you better be ready for it. We stick on her like glue.’

‘I’m ready,’ Surani said. ‘Do I look like I’m not ready? And “stick on her like glue”? Could you pick a worse cliché?’

Kepler ignored him.

But the pursuit didn’t happen just then. From inside Gabriela’s apartment, whispers arose. And the game began again.

Uhn, uhn, uhn …

‘Fuck,’ Surani muttered, sitting down once more.

Kepler stared. His partner rarely swore. The Charles Prescott Op was bringing out the worst in everybody.

CHAPTER
12

Noon, Saturday
30 minutes earlier